Former NYC School Chancellor Joel Klein Is Not Telling the Whole Truth About His Personal History

“Sleight of Hand,” an article in the November-December issue of The American Prospect, describes how federal, state, and local housing policies, including the public housing program, were designed a half-century ago to segregate our major metropolitan areas, and how the residential patterns created by public policy at that time persist to this day.

The article does so by way of describing the childhood of Joel Klein, former New York City schools chancellor and now C.E.O. of a Rupert Murdoch company selling technology and software to public schools. Klein has often used his life story to prove an educational theory – that poor quality teachers are the cause of disadvantaged children’s failures. The life story is that he grew up poor, in public housing, “a kid from the streets” with little interest in education until a high school teacher “saw something that I hadn’t seen in myself.” And this life story, Klein and his allies imply, proves that if only disadvantaged students today had the kind of teacher from whom he had benefited, they too would excel and succeed.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says, “Klein knows, as I do, that great teachers can transform a child’s life chances—and that poverty is not destiny. It’s a belief deeply rooted in his childhood, as a kid growing up in public housing. … He understands that education is … the force that lifts children from public-housing projects to first-generation college students.”

As an education policy analyst, I had heard Joel Klein tell this story about his deprived childhood many times during the last decade. But I never really paid attention. Then, a few years ago, I started to research the history of residential racial segregation, attempting to understand how it came to be that many low-income African-American children are concentrated in urban ghettos where their disadvantage is so overwhelming that even the best teachers and schools cannot overcome it. I learned that 60 years ago when Joel Klein was growing up, public housing projects like his had been constructed not for low-income people but for two-parent middle class families with stable employment histories and solid credit. Unlike the public housing projects we know today, rents in these projects were not government-subsidized; residents paid market-rate rents, sometimes more. After World War II, with returning veterans like Joel Klein’s father flooding an already tight housing market, public housing was often the most desirable residence available for stable employed men and their families. These middle class public housing projects were located in white neighborhoods and intended for whites only (a token number of middle class blacks were admitted in northern city projects), while public housing projects for low income blacks were sited in distant inner-city ghettos in those same northern cities.

4. Superb

5. So long as wealthy,

self-interest groups and individuals control mass media, Kline like falsehoods will give rise to silly myths. If Kline is pushing the meme of public school teachers as being enemies of the state he will join the ranks of other school reformers like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao and Pot Pol.

12. Read the article and

don't obsess over spelling. How far to do you think it is from suggesting that public school teachers are a national security threat to claiming they are politically subversive, that they are corrupting the youth, hate America and are the embodiment of the Anti-Christ? Any of this you haven't already heard? Please read the fate of educators in the totalitarian states I mention, look at the arch of American history, and then you'll know where I got it.

13. How far??? VERY far if you ask me.....

The business about "national security threat" was not directed toward public school teachers and was a paraphrase of the report that the article was subjectively interpreting.

No, teachers were NEVER called a threat to national security, nor were they ever called politically subversive, nor was the claim made that they are corrupting youth, nor that they hate America nor were they called the embodiment of the Anti-Christ.

You have quite a vivid, and bizarre, and quite warped imagination if you read that in the article.

16. You are a very rude

and credulous individual with obvious reading comprehension limitations. My comments regarding subversion, hating America, being the Anti-Christ, are allegations that have been leveled against me personally as well as my profession. They were not quotes from the article and I never attributed them to the article. There recollections are indeed vivid, but they are neither bizarre nor warped. The US is being transformed into a corporate state. Corporations are authoritarian institutions by design. The mass messaging and misinformation they employ to persuade authoritarian followers like you that the very institutions comprising the corporate state will protect you from it is tragic. Your refusal or inability to see the connection between the Lords of Wall Street and other mass murderers in the 20th Century may be do in part to the fact they haven't begun murdering enough of us yet. By the way, the first line of your second paragraph should read: No teachers were EVER ... Regarding comma usage for future reference, the best policy is "if in doubt leave it out." You won't appear as ignorant and pretentious that way.

18. Even more frightening

is the fact that you are the product of someone's educational system and are probably old enough to vote. When I look at it that way, maybe Kline has a point after all. The statement is mine. It is an opinion, not a statement of fact. Being an opinion, it cannot by definition be either reckless or dishonest, your lazy penchant for ad hominem fallacies notwithstanding.

6. "Public housing projects" were created in 1933 during the Roosevelt Administration....

...under the Public Works Administration as a program for the "construction, reconstruction, alteration, or repair under public regulation or control of low-cost housing and slum-clearance projects...".

Most of the early public housing projects were built in inner cities to replace deteriorating tenements in slums (note the "objective" of hte program!!!)

Before making sweeping claims under the guise of accusing someone of "Not Telling the Whole Truth About His Personal History" you would be wise to do some research and then be more specific about such claims.

7. The point of the post is clearly that not all public housing was "the projects"

Klein's self-narrative appears intended to convey the image of a poor inner-city kid being saved from a life of poverty and crime by the encouragement of an inspiring teacher.

But according to the article, Klein -- who was born in Brooklyn in 1946 -- was the son of a solidly middle class family, lived in a project consisting of such families, and went to the schools that served such projects.

I'm Klein's age, and I remember going with my parents to visit the family of some friend or relative of theirs when I was perhaps 11 or 12 in what was probably a very similar project. The place seemed a little tacky to me -- small rooms and the windows were the inexpensive type that slid to one side instead of going up and down -- but it was certainly not slum-like.

I think many of us had an inspiring teacher who pushed us to go further than we thought we could. In my case, there was a friend of my parents who taught at Bronx Science and who insisted when he heard my PSAT scores that I needed to go somewhere more selective than City College.

But that's very different from Klein's claim that good teachers alone can lift kids out of poverty and that if the kids fail it's their teachers' fault.

8. Public housing in NYC (I grew up in Brooklyn too - was born only 2 years after he was)....

...as noted in my post, REPLACED "slums", not created them, and most in northern cities, particularly NYC (Brooklyn) were built in poorer or industrial neighborhoods in those cities. One of the objectives was to improve the overall neighborhood (perhaps the precursor to "gentrification", although using public funds not private funds)

Before "attacking" what he said about his childhood, has anyone actually determined in which public housing project he grew up or where specifically it was located?

NYCHA was created in 1934. At the end of 1935, NYCHA dedicated its first development, called First Houses, located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The Authority boomed in partnership with Robert Moses after World War II as a part of Moses' plan to clear old tenements and remake New York as a modern city. Moses indicated later in life that he was disappointed at how the public housing system fell into decline and disrepair. Originally intended for working families, the projects increasingly became occupied by low-income families, many of whom had no working adult.

20. try reading the article

Klein did live in public housing after his family moved to Queens in 1955 when he was nine years old. But he fails to say—perhaps because he truly doesn’t realize—that some public housing in New York in the 1940s and 1950s, including the Woodside Houses project where his family resided, was built for white, middle-class families. The poor and the problems poverty causes were unwelcome. This distinction is critical to understanding Klein’s history and why it undermines his current policy prescriptions.

family moving into woodside houses, may 23, 1949.

Returning World War II veterans like Klein’s father confronted a housing shortage. To address it, New York erected projects like Woodside Houses, an attractive six-story development with trees, grassy areas, and park benches. Residents were not on the dole but paid rent that covered their housing costs; apartments were not subsidized and were not part of the national low-income housing program.

Rather, for prospective tenants in Woodside Houses and its sister projects, the New York City Housing Authority enforced 21 disqualifying factors. Excluded were single-parent families and those with irregular employment history, out-of-wedlock births, criminal records, narcotics addiction, or mental illness—in other words, any family with the qualities we now associate with public housing. Couples had to show marriage licenses to apply. To filter out undesirables, inspectors visited applicants’ previous homes to verify good housekeeping habits, sufficient furniture, and well-behaved children. Neighborhood public schools serving complexes like Woodside Houses thus didn’t have to contend with unruly adolescents; they had already been weeded out by the Housing Authority.

33. I have read the article, more than once now.........

In the article, he is quoted as saying this:

"By most people’s lights, we were certainly working-class, poor. … I grew up in a pretty unhappy household. …"

Growing up in lower-middle class or perhaps "poor" Bushwick, in Brooklyn during the same timeframe as he, the perception of those around us was that we were "better off" than the "poor people living in public housing". THAT is precisely what he said, "by most people's lights, we were certainly working-class, poor..."

Of course, anyone can skew that statement to suit whatever purposes they want, but most of those who lived in public housing were indeed considered "poor".

We can argue the point forever, but to latch onto that to call what he says "less than the truth" is really stretching it to the point of incredulity.

43. of course people lie by implying.

"I grew up in public housing in Queens and grew up in the streets of New York. I always like to think of myself as a kid from the streets, and education changed my life. … I stood on the shoulders of teachers to see a world that I couldn’t have seen growing up in the family that I grew up in.

My father had dropped out of high school in the tenth grade during the Great Depression. My mother graduated from high school and never went to college. No one in my family had attended college … or knew about college.I had no appreciation of reading or cultural activities. …

By most people’s lights, we were certainly working-class, poor. … I grew up in a pretty unhappy household. …Teachers set expectations for me that were not commensurate with my background or my family’s income. …

Nobody in school said to me, ‘Well, you grew up in public housing, your parents don’t read, you’ve never been to a museum, so we shouldn’t expect too much from you!’ … I wanted to play ball, I had a girlfriend at the time. I thought school was OK, a little overrated but I thought it was OK. … Mr. Harris, my physics teacher at William Cullen Bryant High School, saw something that I hadn’t seen in myself. … I realized, through him, that the potential of students in inner-city schools is too often untapped. We can fix that. Demography need not be destiny."

2. The public housing he lived in was for middle-class families. The Housing Authority specifically excluded below-poverty tenants, single-mothers, anyone who'd had trouble with the law, etc. Tenants paid market rates, and rents weren't subsidized. It was about 88% white.

3. His parents obviously could read. His father passed a civil-service exam to work for the post office. His mother was an accountant.

4. His parents obviously valued education. His father took him to court to watch the cases, for example.

5. He was an honor student & student leader throughout his junior-high & high-school years. He graduated from high school at 16 because he'd been admitted to a special accelerated program (the article is written by someone in the same program who went to school with him).

He impugns the memory of his dead parents when he implies they raised him in a tenement, they couldn't read, they didn't value education, they didn't know what college was, he was raised 'on the streets', and his success in life is due to a random physics teacher who 'saw something in him he hadn't seen."

He's a big fat liar. He was a middle-class jewish boy living in a middle-class jewish/italian neighborhood going to a middle-class high-school school.

Among his classmates at WC Bryant HS:

Suze Rotolo (1943–2011), an American artist, book artist, author, but best known as Bob Dylan's girlfriend between 1961 and 1964. She is the woman walking with him on the cover of his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

Richard Kline (1944– ), played "Larry Dallas" on classic ABC-TV sitcom "Three's Company". He also performed on Broadway in "City of Angels" and is a member of the Lincoln Center Repertory Company.

Joel Klein (1946– ), New York City Department of Education Chancellor from 2002-2011

The person who wrote the article is also jewish and grew up in astoria in the same social milieu klein did:

In misrepresenting his childhood, Klein has distorted the world of both our fathers. Mine, already out of high school and at City College of New York when the Great Depression hit, was also fortunate to land a job in the post office, working second jobs at night. Permanently traumatized by the insecurity of the Depression, he remained unhappily in the federal civil service so he, like Charles Klein, could see his children through college, after which he was rewarded, also like the elder Klein, with a secure federal pension. My mother, like Klein’s, was a bookkeeper.

I never lived in public housing, but my parents’ small single-family home in a white Queens neighborhood not far from Woodside had monthly mortgage payments about the same as the rent Charles and Claire Klein paid to the Housing Authority. Our family income was similar to the Kleins’; both families were middle-class.

At Bayside High School, I also had Sidney Harris for physics. (After I graduated, he transferred to Bryant.) I don’t doubt that he was an excellent teacher and inspired Klein, but he did nothing similar for me. I was instead motivated by my Latin and journalism teachers. Like the 1963 yearbook at Bryant High School, my 1959 Bayside yearbook has few black faces. Klein and I both attended almost entirely segregated, white schools.

Children like Klein and me were privileged, not perhaps in money but in what sociologists term “social capital.” Nobody I know of from my special-progress class dropped out of school; my fellow students typically went on to become college professors, doctors, business executives, accountants, writers, and lawyers. Sure, we loved to play street stickball, but we were not “kids from the streets,” as Klein would have it. We were surrounded by peers with middle-class ambitions and goals.

It would be obscene for me to claim I overcame severe hardship and was rescued from deprivation by schoolteachers. It is more obscene for Klein to do so, because his claim supports attacks on contemporary teachers and a refusal to acknowledge impediments teachers face because of their students’ social and economic deprivation.

It’s a deprivation that he never suffered but that many children from public housing do today.

Susan Anspach (born November 23, 1942) is an American stage and film actress.

Anspach was born in New York City and was raised in Queens, New York. She graduated from William Cullen Bryant High School in Long Island City in 1960. Paul Simon was a neighbor. She enrolled in the music department at the Catholic University of America....

44. Final word on this since I'm butting up against a brick wall........

...he NEVER described where he lived as a "tenement"

...the objective of "public housing" when it was created in the early 1930s was what you say, but by the early 1950s (about 20 years later) that objective had changed dramatically, not how you portray it.

...he NEVER said his parents couldn't read - I KNEW you would cite that quote - and figured it would be out of context. He said in that sentence

"Nobody in school said to me, ‘Well, you grew up in public housing, your parents don’t read"

How could you POSSIBLY conclude, after he stated that his father dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and his mother graduated from high school, that he "impugned the memory of his dead parents" - surely you're knowledeable enough to know that no one gets through the 10th grade or graduates from high school without being able to read.

Obviously you have an agenda, and you'll twist words to forward that agenda. And you misrepresent his statement to that aim - he said "NOBODY...said...your parents don't read"!!!!!!

45. oh baloney.

"...the objective of "public housing" when it was created in the early 1930s was what you say, but by the early 1950s (about 20 years later) that objective had changed dramatically, not how you portray it."

you keep talking about 'public housing' in generalities, like it was all the same. it wasn't, as you'd know if you'd bothered to read the article or the posts in this thread.

woodside houses wasn't even *built* until 1949, for god's sake, and klein's family moved there in 1955, when he was 9. It was middle-class housing when klein's family lived there, as I've demonstrated *with photos and information from the period*, which you ignore. Not to mention photos from his high school during the same period, his (middle-class, jewish) classmates of the same period, etc.

For some reason, despite all evidence, you want to believe klein grew up poor in 'the projects'. Probably because you've bought into the narrative of 'good teachers/bad teachers' as is clear from your post about 'good teachers making the difference'.

No, he grew up in a middle-class jewish community in astoria in the 50s.

And I went to school in the 50s and 60s & had plenty of *terrible* teachers. Yet i went to college & fulfilled all the middle-class expectations. Because I grew up in a functional working-class community, where people had jobs and parents valued education.

"...he NEVER said his parents couldn't read - I KNEW you would cite that quote - and figured it would be out of context."

Baloney. The meaning is clear from the full quote, & if you can't see it, you need to work on your own reading skills.

Klein: "Teachers set expectations for me that were not commensurate with my background or my family’s income....Nobody in (my) school said to me, ‘Well, you grew up in public housing, your parents don’t read, you’ve never been to a museum, so we shouldn’t expect too much from you!’"

He's clearly saying that teachers' expectations of him were ABOVE what his (fictionally economically and academically impoverished) background might warrant. IOW, "Even though I grew up in public housing, even though my parents couldn't read, even though I'd never been to a museum, my teachers didn't focus on that, they expected a lot of me."

It's not the only place Klein dishonors his parents:

"I stood on the shoulders of teachers to see a world that I couldn’t have seen growing up in the family that I grew up in."

No one in my family....knew about college. I had no appreciation of reading or cultural activities.

By most people’s lights, we were certainly working-class, poor. … I grew up in a pretty unhappy household. …

"surely you're knowledeable enough to know that no one gets through the 10th grade or graduates from high school without being able to read."

Yes, & I also know that the idea that a middle-class (or even working-class) jewish family in 1950s-60s NYC didn't know anything about college, reading or culture is equally laughable. Yet that is what klein said.

He's a liar, he dishonors his parents and his own history, and he's lying in order to destroy the public education system that nurtured him, to fill his own pockets. He's a world-class asshole.

46. Why? Because what is being said about him in the sweeping proclamations about him is.......

47. weren't you going away? wasn't that your last post? take it up with the writer, who grew up

around astoria queens in the same era, in the same middle-class jewish milieu, had the same teacher, etc.

Klein graduated high school at 16, because, like me, he was placed in a New York City program that compressed three years of junior high school into two. These “special progress” classes, at Klein’s Junior High School 10 and my nearby Junior High School 74, were not for would-be truants and gang members but for academically advanced students with ambitious parents who were impatient with the regular curricular pace.

klein is a freaking liar. anyone who's ever seen him speak knows he never grew up 'on the streets.'

Klein did live in public housing after his family moved to Queens in 1955 when he was nine years old. But he fails to say...that some public housing in New York in the 1940s and 1950s, including the Woodside Houses project where his family resided, was built for white, middle-class families. The poor and the problems poverty causes were unwelcome....

New York City Housing Authority enforced 21 disqualifying factors.

Excluded were single-parent families and those with irregular employment history, out-of-wedlock births, criminal records, narcotics addiction, or mental illness—in other words, any family with the qualities we now associate with public housing. Couples had to show marriage licenses to apply.

To filter out undesirables, inspectors visited applicants’ previous homes to verify good housekeeping habits, sufficient furniture, and well-behaved children. Neighborhood public schools serving complexes like Woodside Houses thus didn’t have to contend with unruly adolescents; they had already been weeded out by the Housing Authority.

48. All you say about those disqualifying factors and and "filters" had been abandoned by 1955......

.....when his family move to the Woodside Houses. Why do you keep spouting the same stuff without any material facts?

Yes, I was going to go away but if you keep "attacking" what I said and refuse to admit reality, I can't go. Why don't you acknowledge your error in claiming that he said his parents couldn't read? Surely by now, with my last posts you know that is totally false!

49. take it up with the writer. you're the one with no material facts. you've posted nothing but

a quote from klein, whom you apparently believe to be unimpeachable, and your own repetitious assertion that public housing was bad.

i made no error. joel klein is a liar, that's all. it's not the first time. his lying is well-known and fairly constant. no way he could have done the things he done without being comfortable with lies, liars and lying.

50. I read the words the way they were written, not how I want them to be written, as you've done.

19. the fact is that the public housing project klein lived in was neither a low-income 'project' nor

subsidized housing (e.g. the gov't didn't pay part of the rent to keep it cheap for renters). klein's family's income was *above* the median. He didn't grow up poor in any way, shape or form.

and far from being diverted from some impoverished life of crime by a *special* teacher, he was a top student all through his entire school career, because he came from an upper middle class, educated jewish family that valued & pushed education.

klein is a big fat liar.

try reading the article before posting irrelevant comments.

Klein’s family was also not poor by any reasonable criteria. Charles Klein’s annual post-office salary in the 1950s was about equal to the national median household income. The median national salary for full-time female clerical workers was about three-fourths of the national median household income. Thus, so long as Claire Klein worked, the Klein family income would have been substantially in excess of the national median. Indeed, Charles Klein was well-off enough to take his family on an annual summer vacation to the Catskills...Charles then retired with a defined-benefit federal pension to a Florida apartment near the beach—an option unlikely for public-housing residents as we now know them...

Klein did live in public housing after his family moved to Queens in 1955 when he was nine years old. But he fails to say—perhaps because he truly doesn’t realize—that some public housing in New York in the 1940s and 1950s, including the Woodside Houses project where his family resided, was built for white, middle-class families. The poor and the problems poverty causes were unwelcome. This distinction is critical to understanding Klein’s history and why it undermines his current policy prescriptions.

Returning World War II veterans like Klein’s father confronted a housing shortage. To address it, New York erected projects like Woodside Houses, an attractive six-story development with trees, grassy areas, and park benches. Residents were not on the dole but paid rent that covered their housing costs; apartments were not subsidized and were not part of the national low-income housing program.

Rather, for prospective tenants in Woodside Houses and its sister projects, the New York City Housing Authority enforced 21 disqualifying factors. Excluded were single-parent families and those with irregular employment history, out-of-wedlock births, criminal records, narcotics addiction, or mental illness—in other words, any family with the qualities we now associate with public housing. Couples had to show marriage licenses to apply. To filter out undesirables, inspectors visited applicants’ previous homes to verify good housekeeping habits, sufficient furniture, and well-behaved children. Neighborhood public schools serving complexes like Woodside Houses thus didn’t have to contend with unruly adolescents; they had already been weeded out by the Housing Authority.

10. And, as Klein grew up in New York City,

and attended NY city schools in early 50s (as I did,) he benefitted from excellent public education. EDUCATION was different at the time.

'Klein grew up in New York City and attended public schools, graduating from William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens in 1963. He attended Columbia University, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He received his law degree from Harvard Law School, again graduating magna cum laude, in 1971. He then clerked for Chief Judge David Bazelon on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1973 until 1974, before then clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.'

21. *how* was it different?

24. Well, as I was a kid at the time,

I can't swear, but seems to me at least since I've been a parent, 27 years, politics have intruded hugely into public education matters, as in 'how to,' testing, teacher qualifications, curricula. And before that, when still an undergraduate (in Long Island, NY,) controversy about such matters were unknown to us (kids, of course.)

27. Doubt it; used to be up to 'professional' educators, imo.

28. if you could give me an example of what you mean. there's always been an intersection of

'professional educators,' big capital, and politicians in the determination of education policy.

with big capital funding the work & direction of the professional educators and the politicians enacting their favored research into policy.

just one example:

Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has a long and distinguished history.

It is an independent policy and research center, whose primary activities of research and writing have resulted in published reports on every level of education...Influential Foundation achievements include development of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA), publication of the Flexner Report on medical education, creation of the Carnegie Unit, founding of the Educational Testing Service...

Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization. It is presently headquartered near Princeton, New Jersey.

ETS develops various standardized tests primarily in the United States for K–12 and higher education, and it also administers international tests including the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) General and Subject Tests....

30. Not my impression,

but as I've said, I'm not an educational historian. I am, however, 67; have been around for a while.

I attended public schools in NY, a public university in Ohio, and recall hearing friends talk about 'teacher-ed' and McGuffey readers.

Since public schools in DC were unacceptable we found a private, and then parochial schools, which provided our daughters good, individual, thoughtful educations, with little political intrusion; testing not determined by the 'state.'

Their first school was based on Piaget's studies and lessons, and if only such approach would be widespread, we'd all be in a better place. Their next school, 4-8 grades, was parochial, affordable and liberal. Both daughters were asked to explain Chanukah to their classes! AND the principal visited with EACH student, during the year, in class, after studying their progress. They went on to different high schools, to suit their needs; one daughter had special needs, and we found a school with fine attention to her needs and that of others.

32. 'Opted out' in 1988, when daughter old enough for pre-k.

Nothing to do with 'sex ed or something like that;' based on inability of DC public schools to provide decent education for my daughters.

As it turned out, parochial school girls attended from 4th grade had an ok 'sex-ed' program, and they provided option for parents to 'opt out' if they chose, after describing the curriculum. We did NOT opt out.

MY public high school, 40-something years prior, had a good sex ed program, a good drivers ed program, good music and sports programs, and 'shop' and 'home-ec,' few of which are, apparently, available nationwide these days in public schools.

34. Parochial schools?

What denomination were those parochial schools? From my experience parochial schools had their own way of injecting "politics' into their teachings. That is innate in the curriculums of most parochial schools.

37. Holy Trinity school in DC,

maybe the most liberal, and Catholic, school available. (Where JFK and Jackie married, incidentally.) We were fortunate. ONE of the schools we interviewed was clearly heavy-handed dogma + Catholic 'politics,' Buchanan's parish, NOT coincidentally!

They had some classes about religion, but the day to day classes/curricula appeared not to have been infected by politics and/or dogma.

39. Interesting. I won't dispute it but...

....I find it hard to believe (not questioning you) that they did not impose their views on abortion, contraception, or homosexuality on their students - all three of which are serious political issues in the US.

40. Those were part of deciding whether or not to opt out of sex-ed.

As a consequence of not opting out, we were able to have cool and objective discussions with our daughters on the subjects.

They are firmly pro-choice, and at 24 and 27, that's important. And pro-contraception. And one of their close friends had 2 moms (one of whom passed on due to an accident,) so no doubt about our family's position on homosexuality.

COINCIDENTALLY! Daughters first school, ;private not parochial, pre-k thru gr. 3 which has since expanded thru gr 6 posted this today: 'Our Director of Primary School wrote an article for Science and Children magazine—"Reuse that Notebook! Keeping a Notebook Throughout Grade Levels as a Reference Tool." It was recently selected to be published in the 2013 National Science Teachers Association's book, A Year of Inquiry: A Collection for Elementary Educators.'